The Dead

by Gatward, David

  Lazarus shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think there are any more. I can’t smell them anyway.’

  ‘Craig’s got a point though,’ said Arielle. ‘For that thing to be here at all, it must have got through the veil.’

  Lazarus pointed to the opening the giant had emerged from, the one he’d found more steps leading down in to darkness. ‘I know we don’t want to,’ he said, ‘but the only way we’re going to find out is by going down there.’

  ‘But what about the coffins?’ asked Craig. ‘Why are they here?’

  Lazarus had forgotten all about the coffins. He looked over to where they were piled on top of each other. Seeing them made him feel almost more uneasy than seeing the Dead, though he wasn’t sure why. It was as if their presence alone presented a problem, the answer to which no one was going to like.

  ‘The Dead will only use corpses if they’ve nothing else available,’ said Arielle. ‘It’s a last resort really. They can hide in a living person easily, but a dead person walking around is a little more obvious. People notice.’

  ‘So like I said,’ said Craig, ‘why are they here? If the Dead aren’t interested in bodies, then who is?’

  Lazarus didn’t like the answer that slipped to the front of his mind.

  21 Crossed Over

  ‘Dad.’

  Lazarus saw disbelief in Craig’s eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘Dad brought them here,’ he repeated.

  ‘But why would he want coffins?’ asked Craig.

  Lazarus was thinking back to what they’d found in the workshop in the cellar. Not just the diaries but the notes Arielle had come across. And now the coffins.

  ‘Lazarus,’ said Arielle, ‘if you’ve something to say, just say it.’

  ‘I know this is going to sound nuts,’ Lazarus began, ‘but I think Dad’s gone to get Mom. He’s the one who’s making a hole in the veil.’

  Arielle nearly choked. ‘Don’t be idiotic!’

  ‘I’m not being idiotic!’ said Lazarus. ‘Don’t you see? This is what it’s all been about! Dad’s spent years planning it, researching it, and now he’s gone and done it. He’s gone after Mom.’

  ‘This is not some Greek myth we’re dealing with,’ spat Arielle.

  ‘I know!’ Lazarus said, his voice edging to a shout. ‘But it’s the only answer that works with any of this!’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Arielle after a moment.

  Lazarus tried to explain, but it was difficult, not least because he felt like he was making it up as he went along. ‘Red knew someone was trying to push through,’ he said. ‘He just never expected it to be Dad. Or that Dad had already gone through when he came to see him. That’s why Dad’s missing. He’s not here. He’s already crossed over.’

  ‘A Keeper would never consider anything as crazy and wrong as what you’re suggesting,’ Arielle protested.

  Lazarus ignored her. ‘There’s all the stuff we found in the cellar – his diaries talking about wanting to get Mom back and all those notes about going into the Land of the Dead.’

  Arielle repeated herself. ‘A Keeper would never—’

  ‘Being a Keeper wasn’t as important as having Mom back!’ shouted Lazarus, cutting Arielle off. ‘If you don’t believe me, then you go read his diaries, OK? You seem to be forgetting that Dad’s just a human. That’s it. He lost Mom and it destroyed him and he’s spent the rest of his life working out a way to get her back! You said something when we were up in the cellar about needing a good disguise because the Dead would find you quickly. Well that’s what Dad’s used the coffins for, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re not making any sense,’ Arielle said stubbornly.

  ‘I’m making more sense than any of this has made since it all started,’ Lazarus said ‘And I’d bet anything that whatever is in those coffins, whatever’s left of the original occupants, they’ve been stripped of their clothes.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Craig. ‘What use would that be?’

  ‘It’s the perfect disguise,’ said Lazarus. ‘The clothes of the Dead would have their smell on them. Don’t ask me how long it would last, but I’m guessing there’s a chance it would be just enough to disguise one of the living and allow someone to walk where only the Dead usually go.’

  Arielle walked over to the coffins. She paused, then kicked at one, knocking the lid off and onto the floor. ‘Seems you’re right,’ she said, then bent over and reached inside. When she stood up and turned back to Lazarus and Craig, hanging from her hand was a corpse, its skin not rotten but dried like pork rind.

  It was naked.

  ‘I really didn’t need to see that,’ said Craig.

  Arielle let the corpse slip from her hand to break on the floor, its skull shattering like a glass bauble, ‘If you’re right,’ she said, ‘then your father may well have started something that none of us have the power to stop. Opening a way through the veil is one thing, but to cross over and bring someone back?’

  ‘You look afraid,’ said Lazarus.

  ‘I am,’ Arielle replied fiercely, ‘and with good reason. The Land of the Dead is a terrible place – you’ve seen the kind that occupy it. They’re there for a reason. I knew your mom, Lazarus. She would not be there. Her spirit was too pure.’

  ‘I don’t care what you think,’ said Lazarus, striding off to where the blacksmith had emerged. ‘It’s the only answer.’

  ‘And that’s why I’m so afraid, Lazarus!’

  Lazarus stopped in his tracks. Arielle actually sounded scared. And he had a terrible feeling that wasn’t a good sign.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, looking back at her. ‘What’s wrong? What’s really going on here?’

  Arielle’s face was still, barely a flicker of emotion showing. But her eyes were alive with a horror that Lazarus knew he didn’t want to see. ‘Because if it is true, Lazarus,’ she said, ‘then someone – something – got to your father and tricked him. It’s the only way he’d have considered what you’re suggesting. That’s what’s going on. And that’s why we should all be afraid.’

  When she next spoke, her voice was dark and hollow and sounded terribly alone.

  ‘The Dead envy the living. What they yearn for more than anything is a permanent way through to this world from theirs. They don’t have the strength to punch through from their side, but if someone did it from here – if somehow they were able to persuade someone to do it – then there would be no stopping them. The dam would be broken and the Dead would flood out. And you can bet Hell would follow after.’

  ‘Red said the same,’ said Lazarus. ‘About the Dead envying the living.’

  ‘And he understands better than any of us what that really means,’ said Arielle fiercely. ‘If you’re right, and if your father has gone over, then we have to stop the gap now before it’s too late.’

  ‘But what about Dad?’ Lazarus protested. ‘How’s he going to get back if we block the way he got in?’

  ‘He’s not, Lazarus,’ she said. ‘He’s lost.’

  Lazarus was stunned by Arielle’s answer. Lost? Did she mean there was no way Dad would ever get back? There was no way he was ever going to accept that. No way at all.

  ‘We have to get him back,’ he said, finding it difficult to hold back his anger.

  Arielle was striding past him, heading to the dark hole in the cavern wall and the steps they had not yet explored. ‘If we don’t stop this now, Lazarus, nothing matters. Don’t you understand? The Dead cannot be allowed to return. No one will be safe. It’ll be war, Lazarus, or worse!’

  Lazarus didn’t have chance to respond. Arielle had disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Craig, turning to Lazarus.

  ‘I’m not letting her ruin my dad’s chances of coming back,’ said Lazarus.

  He pushed himself into a sprint across the cavern after her, Craig close behind, and dove down the steps, stumbling as much as running, taking two at a time. They seemed to go on and on, twisting and turning, sometimes twisting in a
tight spiral, but Lazarus didn’t ease his pace, not even when he bounced into the wall or nearly tripped. Something was driving him on now and he was letting it pull him on. And with each step, all he could think about was that he was getting closer and closer to his real father. The other one was dead, a shadow behind which the real Dad had hidden all along. He wasn’t going to lose him now.

  At last the steps came to an end. Lazarus and Craig stumbled out into another cavern. It was about the same size as the one they’d come from but rather than cold and musty it smelled faintly of smoke. Arielle was directly in front of them, facing whatever it was that occupied the center of this place. When they edged around Arielle, they saw something they could never have imagined or even guessed at.

  Arielle didn’t look at them. Instead she took a deep draft from her hip flask, then let it drop on the floor.

  ‘What has your father done, Lazarus?’

  Lazarus couldn’t speak. His voice was trapped inside him and he couldn’t rip it out.

  ‘Of all the things I was expecting to see,’ said Craig, ‘it wasn’t that.’

  22 Legion

  In the center of the cavern lay a large circle of burned-out candles. Their sweet charred smell was still in the air. It reminded Lazarus briefly of walking through a cathedral. The last time he’d seen a circle such as this had been with Clair, but then she’d been inside it; not this. Because this was impossible, wasn’t it? There was no way it could be here, no way at all.

  But it was. After all, he’d seen it in photographs, recognised the people driving it, been told that was him, just there, sitting in the car seat in the back.

  ‘It’s Mom’s,’ he said at last, his voice bubbling out of him as tears came to his eyes. ‘It’s the car she was killed in.’

  It was little more than a twisted, rusting shell, a skeleton of the car it had once been, but it was the most haunting thing Lazarus had ever seen. Red, the Dead, the blacksmith he’d just encountered – none of them had anything on this. His past had stormed into his present. Standing so close to this thing that had destroyed three lives so long ago made Lazarus go cold. Orange rust covered it, and here and there a faint speck of the car’s original light-blue paint was visible.

  Craig was speechless for a while. He stared at Lazarus and then at the car. ‘But how can you be sure?’ he said at last. ‘It’s just a wreck now, doesn’t even look like a car.’

  ‘I found some pictures once,’ said Lazarus. ‘I’d gone into Dad’s study. They were on his desk. I never told him I saw them. But they were police photos, I think. Photos of this.’

  ‘Your father must’ve got hold of it after the investigations into the accident were over,’ said Arielle, circling the wreck, her sword now out of its scabbard. ‘To get it down here, he would’ve had to cut it up and rebuild it.’

  ‘Why’s it rippling like that?’ asked Craig.

  Lazarus had noticed that, too. The wreck seemed to warp slightly, like he was looking at something under water or trapped in a bubble, yellow sunlight rippling and bouncing on the surface.

  ‘I found this,’ said Arielle, handing something over to Lazarus. ‘It’s empty because the contents were thrown over the wreck and the candles.’

  Lazarus looked at what Arielle had handed him and remembered where he’d last seen it – by the clock above the fire in his dad’s office. It was the missing ornament.

  ‘What do you mean by contents?’ he asked. ‘It’s just a vase.’

  ‘It’s an urn,’ said Arielle. ‘The kind generally used to carry the ashes of someone who’s been cremated. In this case, I would expect that it contained the ashes of your mom. That was until your dad came down here and threw them all over the place.’

  ‘But what about the rippling?’ said Craig. ‘Why is it doing that?’

  ‘Dad’s opened a way through the veil, hasn’t he?’ said Lazarus at last, struggling past what Arielle had just told him. How was it that he’d never known the black urn had contained the remains of his mother? ‘This car was the last thing Mom was alive in. Dad brought it down here and used it and her ashes to open a rift through the veil. I don’t know how, but that’s what he did.’

  It was almost impossible to take in the amount of work that had gone into not only getting the wrecked car into the cavern, but keeping it secret. But it did go some way to explaining why his dad had always been so distant.

  Arielle said, ‘The rippling effect you see is the veil itself. That wreck of a car that killed both you and your mom has punched through and is now keeping the hole jammed open. It’s how the blacksmith got through. Step through yourself and you’ll be walking in the Land of the Dead. If we don’t close it down soon, more will come. And there will be no stopping them.’

  ‘I’m guessing that’s bad,’ said Craig, and Lazarus saw him edge away from the wreck.

  ‘We don’t know how long this breach in the veil has been open,’ said Arielle, raising her sword, ‘or if many of the Dead are aware of it. But it won’t take long. Rumors spread.’

  Lazarus took a step closer to the shimmering veil. ‘I hate to say this,’ he said, ‘but I can smell them. It’s only faint, but it’s there. They’re on their way.’

  Craig stepped back further.

  ‘You have to close this down, Lazarus,’ said Arielle at once. ‘And before you ask, no – I don’t know how to do it. I’ve never seen anything like this before. But you’re a Keeper now, like your father. He opened it. You have to close it.’

  ‘I’m not leaving him in there,’ Lazarus said. ‘What if he’s on his way back?’

  When Arielle replied, her voice was calm. ‘I know this is hard, but you have to understand: we haven’t the time! A breach like this will grow and grow until an army could walk through without touching the sides! You have to forget about your father.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Lazarus.

  The smell in the air grew suddenly stronger. He took a step back. He heard Craig do the same, stumble and fall to the ground.

  Arielle looked at him, concern in her eyes, sword still raised. ‘Lazarus – I can smell it too. You just need to control your response to it.’

  ‘But it’s so difficult,’ answered Lazarus, swallowing. ‘It’s like it’s suffocating me.’ He took a deep breath, focused, then said, ‘I think something’s getting close. It’s like when Red came.’

  He saw the car shimmer again, only this time it seemed to draw out of focus. Then it was gone altogether.

  ‘The breach is stabilizing!’ hissed Arielle, her voice desperate. ‘Lazarus – you have to close it down! Now!’

  Lazarus stared at the space where only moments earlier the car had been. Now all he could see was a silvery blackness in its place, a bubble of thick shadow that pulsed like it had a heartbeat. He felt like he could reach out and touch it.

  A screech shot from inside the bubble like the burst of a jet engine, forcing Lazarus and Craig to clamp their hands over their ears.

  ‘Lazarus!’ yelled Arielle. ‘Do something!’

  ‘But what?’ Lazarus shouted back. ‘What do I do?’

  Another screech; louder, closer ...

  ‘Anything – follow your instincts! You have to close this before it’s too late!’

  Lazarus tasted bile at the back of his throat and coughed. He squeezed his eyes shut, pushed the palms of his hands into them, tried to fight the wave of nausea slipping through him. It was overpowering. He bent forward, like he was about to throw up. Then something fell out of the darkness, and he did.

  Lazarus wiped the vomit from his mouth, stumbled backwards, knocked into Craig. He could feel himself panicking, losing control, but he couldn’t stop himself staring at the thing now pushing itself out of the veil. He’d seen the Dead, how human they looked. But this… This looked anything but.

  It seemed to pull darkness with it in thick, ripped ribbons. It kept oozing through the veil, growing and growing, each movement heavy and deliberate, dragging itself across the cavern’s floor
with huge, white sinewy arms split with cuts like rifts in a glacier, a slime trail behind it as wide as a river. It squealed and groaned as it moved.

  The hands, Lazarus saw, were the size of shovels, and with each pull forward, they would split open and bleed. Of its head, Lazarus could only see a mound of bloody, wet and matted hair. Its torso was massive and fat like a beached whale, covered in enormous boils that pushed through its skin like they were ready to burst. Lazarus couldn’t yet see its legs, wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  When it was finally through the breach, the thing rested for a moment, letting out deep, rattling breaths that echoed in the cavern.

  Lazarus heard something like bed sheets flapping in the wind. He saw Arielle’s wings slip out of her back and lift her gently off the ground as she raised her sword. For a second he felt a sense of hope, that here, facing this thing, they stood a chance. But then the thing’s arms tensed and it pushed itself up on to its knees. Arielle was cut off from view. Lazarus gave up all hope.

  Oh, God …

  The boils all burst at once. Bits of flesh flew everywhere. Black and red gore showered and spat from the wounds, drenching the cavern. Lazarus felt the thick, warm liquid cover him. He was unable to look away. From the boils, faces pushed out, all of them twisting and screaming, tugged into impossible shapes. Above them, the creature’s head was hidden completely behind the bloody hair that covered it. The faces all turned as one to stare at Lazarus. When they spoke, their voices were a horrible chorus of agony and despair…

  ‘We are Legion!’

  23 Hideous Wound

  Lazarus fell on top of Craig who was just sitting, staring at the creature, tears streaking down his face.

  ‘You have to get out of here!’ Lazarus screamed, grabbing hold of Craig to shake him. ‘Get out now!’

  Craig didn’t even acknowledge him. Lazarus stood up and tried to pull his friend to his feet, but it was no good. He wasn’t going anywhere.